


there is another (teacher)

by ninemoons42



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Force Training, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Gen, International Women's Day, International Women's Day 2016, Lightsabers, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-25 12:29:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6195163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many ways to the Force, and those who are not Jedi can also teach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there is another (teacher)

**Author's Note:**

> Written on and for the occasion of International Women's Day 2016.

A familiar weight upon the palms of her hands, and a quietly comforting beep from the general direction of the door into this particular practice room, and the rain-hushed stillness of the Resistance base in the very small hours of the morning: and Rey’s made the waterlogged trek from the cabin of the _Millennium Falcon_ , where she’s been spending a few extra nights because there are fuel gauges to be replaced and a recalcitrant hyperdrive to be coaxed into peak condition, just for this. A time and a place just to be herself. Sheltered from the world by sturdy walls and the blankness of her own thoughts, that seems to come to her more easily when she’s holding on to that familiar weight.

(And in the back of her mind she can remember scrounging for the right parts, feeling out the right balance, building on to the original staff that she’d been given, making it her own. Adding length and weight and turning the already formidable weapon into something better. She’d gone through so much with it.)

Some beings meditated in silence and stillness, and others meditated over the sights of a blaster or of a rifle or some other projectile weapon, and still others did it in the silent star-filled void of space -- and Rey falls into that meditation as she springs forward, as she swings one end of her staff into the imaginary midsection of an imaginary human-sized foe. As she parries and lunges and swings, and she dances around the full length and weight of the staff in her hands.

She is the staff, and the staff is her, and she doesn’t think of forms or of training patterns: in her mind’s eye she remembers fighting for her very life. A crush of opponents. Where to strike at any given time: head, midsection, knees, feet. A bone-cracking strike to counteract a rushing fist. Slash and swing and she’s light on her feet, she’s untouchable. The staff is her weapon and her shield all at once. 

She’s breathing hard. A distant awareness of the sweat that clings hot and heavy to the nape of her neck, to the crooks of her elbows and the backs of her knees. The slap of her feet on the semi-firm mats of the practice room. Thrust and club and roundhouse swing, kick and punch and still her opponents come, on and on.

In the shadows of her mind she hears a low compelling command etched in fire-blazed red.

Rey redoubles her efforts and the world dissolves into flurrying snow and barren trees, and she smells worn weary leather and the faint familiar stench of many-times-over refiltered air. Her enemy, black and red before her; and the imaginary weight of a leather jacket thrown haphazardly over her shoulders, that somehow stays in place as she spins, one with the staff in her hands. A staff that is somehow stronger than a cutting edge made of light.

She springs, and doesn’t realize that the sound that she hears is her own battle-cry: she dodges a flurry of battering attacks and side-steps her faceless enemy, and she knows what her next moves should be, is executing them as easily as she sucks in her breath. A kick to the back of the knee. The full length of the staff that traps her enemy right against her chest, strangling against the weapon and the sheer _rage_ in her fists, and she holds on till her knuckles are white-hot pain --

 _Let go,_ says a voice.

Such power in that voice, such kind weary worn-down _power_ , and how are those things even possible? 

_Let go._

And in her heart the burning choking _need_ wars with that kindness, with that steadfast stern gentleness, until she feels like she’s been tied out in a sandstorm, until she screams, torn between opposing pulling powers -- 

_Use the Force, Rey. Find the middle way._

She chokes on a desperate breath and -- she lets her staff go.

It clatters to her feet.

And she opens her eyes.

Again the featureless walls of the practice room. Again the mats at her feet. BB-8 is still on the other side of the door from her, peering in and there’s something about the tilt of its domed headpiece that makes her ask, “You were worried for me?”

“As was I.”

Rey looks up to the woman on the mats. A single long braid pulled forward over her shoulder, far too many silver strands. Scarred hands and lines in the corners of her eyes, but she stood straight and upright and Rey towered over her, and felt small. “General.”

“I told you to call me Leia.”

Rey bites her tongue and chews at the inside of her cheek, and says, “Leia,” with not a little difficulty.

“I couldn’t help but be drawn in,” Leia says.

“Sorry,” Rey mutters. “Too loud.”

That gets her a quiet laugh. “If you were too loud I wouldn’t be standing here alone. It would be Luke talking, not me.” Rey watches as Leia motions to the chair next to the door. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

Rey shakes her head, and trails after her, and the weight of her staff, now unmoving, is heavy in her hand.

“It makes sense,” Leia says after she’s settled in the hard-looking chair, “that there are many paths to the Force. Some Jedi were warriors. Some were healers. A great many of them were diplomats.”

Rey has to lean on her staff, a little, to sit down on the floor, and still she squirms because the mats are cold and her knees ache. “Which one are you?”

“I’m none of that. I’m not a Jedi.”

“But you use the Force.”

“Shouldn’t I? I was trained as a politician, and one of the first things they taught me was: _everything that you are and everything that you have is an asset._ ”

Rey nods.

Leia’s hand, when it finds hers, is calloused and warm and trembling. “You have quite the skill with that staff.”

And she thinks of the blue-bladed lightsaber that sits on a console in the room that she shares with Poe and with Finn. “I’ll need to put it away. The lightsaber -- I need to learn how to use it.” 

“I agree, you need to learn how to use it. But why put away something you’re already proficient with? Why let go of the advantage that you already have with that staff?”

“The weapon of a Jedi -- ”

Leia shakes her head, smiling. “I knew a Jedi, once. He was a master of several forms of lightsaber combat, I’m told. But he was just was good a shot with a blaster. Or, when pressed, turbolasers. Besides. Do you think that Jedi have only ever wielded lightsabers? There have been other weapons with plasma blades. There are holos, and maybe some of the old specifications will have survived. But even if these materials were unknown to us -- think about it. If Jedi -- and Sith, and all of the other Force-users -- could create lightsabers, then surely they would have created other weapons.”

“You are saying I should find a way to build a, a light-staff. Or something like it.” Rey is already thinking about the weight of it in her hands, the balance of it as she fights.

“You certainly have my permission to try, if that’s helpful. As well as access to the materials that you think you might need.”

“That -- that’s very generous of you -- ”

Again Rey finds both of her hands caught up in the General’s grip. “I’m not just being generous. I’m using you.”

“I know that.”

“And I will do my best to do well by you. You will know the why and how and when, inasmuch as I can tell you these things.”

Rey nods. “That’s more than fair. Leia.”

“And Rey.” The General looks like there’s a weight on her shoulders, now. A weight like the galaxy itself, and yet she’s still smiling and kind and warm. “My brother wants to teach you -- _his_ way of using the Force. The way that the Jedi have followed throughout the years of their existence. I ask you to consider -- other ways of using its strength. There is a Code, yes, and it is worth studying. But it is up to you to decide to follow its tenets.”

“Then teach me, too,” Rey says, impulsively.

After a long moment, Leia nods. “We shall see.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
